Charles L. McNary was a United States Republican politician from Oregon. He served in the Senate from 1917 to 1944, and was Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. In 1940 he ran for vice president with Wendell Wilkie but they lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt who was running for his third term.

Harold L. Ickes was Secretary of the Interior from 1933-1946 and served under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Asahel Curtis, prominent Seattle photographer of the early twentieth century, was brother to famed photographer, Edward S. Curtis. Asahel Curtis was a founding member of the Mountaineers, a mountain-climbing group which also promoted the preservation of wilderness areas. Curtis was active in the affairs of the club for the first several years after its founding in 1906. His involvement in the Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee (later the Rainier National Park Advisory Board) strained his relations with the Mountaineers. The committee was formed by community business interests to take advantage of the park's tourism potential. Curtis, through the committee, sought to promote greater accessibility to the park by building roads to increase tourism. His opposition to the expansion of the Olympic National Park in the late 1930's as a representative of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the timber industry, led to a further deterioration of relations with the Mountaineers.

The Olympic National Park was first created by President Grover Cleveland in 1897, naming it the Olympic Forest Reserve. In 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt designated the area Mount Olympus National Monument to protect the summer range and breeding grounds of the Olympic elk. In 1915, conceding to the protests and mindful of the increasing need for timber with the advent of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson reduced the Monument by half. On March 25, 1938 Mon C. Wallgren introduced the third and final bill to establish the “Mount Olympus National Park”. The proposed bill (H.R. 10024) would encompass 682,000 acres. The bill passed on June 29, 1938, containing a provision permitting the President to later expand the area of the newly created Park up to 898,292 acres by proclamation. In 1938 Congress signed a bill designating 898,000 acres as Olympic National Park thanks in large part to the enthusiastic support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Two years later, in 1940, Roosevelt added an additional 300 square miles to the park.